Overview

Nearly everything you touch each day – from coffee machine and cars, smartphones, and wearable devices – is powered by computing systems designed and built by computer engineers. Computer engineering impacts every aspect of our lives. Sensors and networking technology allow for the management of logistics and the inventory systems that facilitate access to the foods and products necessary to daily life. Today’s vehicles are equipped with multiple computing subsystems that control engine operation, breaking performance, in-vehicle infotainment, climate control, and much more. Hospitals and health care providers increasingly rely on computer engineering systems to provide medical services from administrative tasks to microsurgery using robotic arms.

Computer engineers are the architects of the miniature city that is a microprocessor. Computer engineers decide on the number and configuration of processing units that perform billions of mathematical operations per second; they design the interconnected infrastructure between these processing units so they can exchange data at mind boggling speeds; and they build the memory architecture and other peripheral units that support microprocessor operation. A career in computer engineering is a lifelong voyage full of exciting opportunities to innovate through diverse projects with a direct impact on our world.

Computer engineering offers opportunities for all types of designs and innovations, such as designing the architecture of a new computer, integrating electronics and sensors into a new embedded system, or controlling the process of the smart grid. There is a great demand for computer engineers who can do it all—from designing computer hardware, components and software, to developing next-generation products and appliances that contain embedded systems. As computer technology becomes more essential to commerce and daily life, companies will need computer engineers who possess a well-developed set of skills and who can quickly adapt to change. To meet the challenges of the future, these companies will turn to computer engineers for innovative solutions and technological leadership.

The computer engineering department offers Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in computer engineering, as well as an accelerated dual degree in which students can earn a BS and an MS in five years. All of our degrees are grounded in in-depth study of software, hardware, and integration of systems.

The department’s faculty members are actively engaged in state-of-the-art curriculum development and focus their research on significant areas of study in computer engineering, including computer architecture, integrated circuits and systems, networks and security, computer visions and machine intelligence, and signal processing, control and embedded systems.

14

Full-time faculty members from 9 countries

6

International Academic Partner Institutions

5

Affiliated PhD Programs

Mission

The computer engineering program mission is “to provide outstanding career-oriented education in computer engineering and engage students in leading edge research.”

The computer engineering program mission is dedicated to furthering RIT’s mission to in preparing students for successful careers “through a unique blend of curricular, experiential, and research programs delivered within a student-centric culture In addition, the computer engineering program’s mission is consistent with the goals of the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. These include the college’s focus to:

educate students to meet the immediate and future needs of industry and to support the intellectual development and growth of its graduates throughout their careers;

perform research that is focused on providing viable solutions to the real-world problems facing our global society; and

partner with industry to accelerate economic growth both regionally and nationally.

Accreditation

The BS degree in computer engineering is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, www.abet.org. For Enrollment and Graduation Data, Program Educational Objectives, and Student Outcomes, please visit the college’s Accreditation.

Using deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, RIT researchers are building an automatic speech recognition application to document and transcribe the traditional language of the Seneca people.

Industrial Advisory Board

The Computer Engineering Industrial Advisory Board is comprised of successful engineers who work at various businesses throughout the United States. Together they review the computer engineering curriculum to ensure that our program remains up-to-date and one of the best. Learn more about our advisory board.

Research

Post-Quantum Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Embedded Devices – The prospect of quantum computers is a threat against the security of currently used public key cryptographic algorithms. It has been widely accepted that, both public key cryptosystems including RSA and ECC will be broken by quantum computers employing certain algorithms. Although large-scale quantum computers do not yet exist, the goal is to develop quantum-resistant cryptosystems in anticipation of quantum computers as most of the public key cryptography that is used on the Internet today is based on algorithms that are vulnerable to quantum attacks.

This project will explore isogenies on elliptic curves as a foundation for quantum-resistant cryptography. Isogeny computation is known to be difficult. This project will analyze newer and faster families of isogenies, which yield a faster solution to the problem of finding isogenies. It will exploit state-of-the-art techniques and employ new optimizations to speed up the computation in isogeny-based cryptography, including tower field and curve arithmetic. The performance of field arithmetic computation is strongly influenced by the processor micro-architecture features, the size of the operands, the algorithms, and programming techniques associated to them. This research will provide preliminary results on developing fast algorithms and architectures for post-quantum cryptographic computations suitable for emerging embedded systems.

Cyber Security – Shanchieh Yang, an RIT faculty-researcher, was recently awarded grant funding from the National Science Foundation and National Security Agency for two cyber security projects. They are intended to get ahead of attackers by understanding early warnings to prevent high-impact actions from happening, and by extracting important characteristics of these warnings and transforming them into a preemptive, tactical system. Yang, professor of computer engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, received $666,960 from the National Science Foundation for “Synthesizing novel attack strategy for predictive cyber situational awareness.” He also was awarded $173,500 from the National Security Agency for “Modeling and simulation of adversary behavior and moving target defense.” In the NSF project, Yang and co-researchers are developing ASSERT—Attack Strategy Synthesis and Ensemble Predictions of Threats—to characterize attack patterns and combinations of exploit behaviors that attackers use. The team will investigate and develop an algorithmic framework to recognize attack strategies in their early stage to enable the prediction of critical threats to enterprise networks before they happen. This would be the key element of the ASSERT system—to enhance predictive cyber situational awareness for security analysts. The algorithm will generate “attack models” that differentiate one attack strategy from another that can then be extrapolated to reveal additional attack scenarios that may or may not be known before, Yang explained. He compared the process to a tunable knob, where key characteristics of attack strategies would be ‘tuned’ to synthesize and simulate plausible attack scenarios and end results to help analysts obtain better situational awareness.

Waveform Aware Routing – This research project, supported by and conducted with Harris Corp., aims at investigating and developing the Waveform Aware Routing paradigm. A network router operating with this paradigm determines the next hop in a network formed by a heterogeneous collection of links configured in some areas as a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network topology. The next hop is chosen by matching a Quality of Service policy with the known waveform properties for the available wireless links. In making the routing decision, the waveform aware router will need to choose between links of very varied characteristics, e.g. broadband radio, satellite communication, over-the-horizon low bit rate link, etc. The approach is in effect a cross-layer technique that allows mobile devices to perform routing functions and traffic shaping through the control on Quality of Service requirements. For this project, RIT is developing a detailed simulation based on NS-3.

Post-Quantum Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Embedded Devices – The prospect of quantum computers is a threat against the security of currently used public key cryptographic algorithms. It has been widely accepted that, both public key cryptosystems including RSA and ECC will be broken by quantum computers employing certain algorithms. Although large-scale quantum computers do not yet exist, the goal is to develop quantum-resistant cryptosystems in anticipation of quantum computers as most of the public key cryptography that is used on the Internet today is based on algorithms that are vulnerable to quantum attacks. This project will explore isogenies on elliptic curves as a foundation for quantum-resistant cryptography. Isogeny computation is known to be difficult. This project will analyze newer and faster families of isogenies, which yield a faster solution to the problem of finding isogenies. It will exploit state-of-the-art techniques and employ new optimizations to speed up the computation in isogeny-based cryptography, including tower field and curve arithmetic. The performance of field arithmetic computation is strongly influenced by the processor micro-architecture features, the size of the operands, the algorithms, and programming techniques associated to them. This research will provide preliminary results on developing fast algorithms and architectures for post-quantum cryptographic computations suitable for emerging embedded systems.

Faculty

Staff

Degree Programs

Undergraduate Degrees

The computer engineering department offers a BS degree in computer engineering and two accelerated dual degrees in which students can earn a BS and an MS in five years. The computer engineering BS degree begins with basic principles of science, mathematics, and technology. The curriculum also includes courses in software engineering, computer science, electronics, embedded systems, computer architecture, networks, signal processing, and integrated circuit design, in addition to professional electives and liberal arts courses.

Graduate Degrees

The computer engineering department offers a Master of Science degree in computer engineering. In addition, many of our faculty members serve as advisors to students pursing doctoral degrees at RIT in which a focus of their research pertains to computer engineering or one of our research areas.

The MS degree in computer engineering provides students with a high level of specialized knowledge in computer engineering, strengthening their ability to successfully formulate solutions to current technical problems, and offers a significant independent learning experience in preparation for further graduate study or for continuing professional development at the leading edge of the discipline. The program accommodates applicants with undergraduate degrees in computer engineering or related programs such as electrical engineering or computer science. (Some additional bridge courses may be required for applicants from undergraduate degrees outside of computer engineering).

Minors and Immersions

The computer engineering minor provides students with a foundation in digital systems design, an understanding of computer organization, and an introduction to embedded systems programming. Students build on this core through elective courses in the areas of hardware design, architectures, networks and systems.